OFFICIAL World of Warcraft Thread

Depends on what you want to do. BG’s or Arenas? They make awesome healers in arenas and their burst DPS is NICE if they’re spec’d ele/enh. Overall I’d say shamans are good to great in endgame PVP. Of course it depends on your gear as well but that’s everybody.

Question what is the music mod you guys were talkin about earlier? Where can I get that? It sounds awesome!

^_-;

I’ve heard enhancement is NOT good end game pvp.

they’re actually kinda shitty in arena healing well because…a 41pt dispellable talent isn’t that great.

Especially in 2’s, they’re horrible. The fact they gotta also just about cast everything, makes it very easy to lockdown in 2s. 3s, elemental is ok, and enhance is actually ok too.

But 5s, elemental is the way to go.

[media=youtube]Gdph2LFCsLI"[/media] too bad wow fights aren’t actually like that

???
Sham are the worst at every possible category. Resto = worst arena healer, period. Enhance = worst melee in the game, period. Elem = Only good in 5s, and need PI to do much.

This is of course speaking about 2.3x, shit is changing some in 2.4 but don’t worry they’re making elemental shaman worse, cause, ya know being decent in one bracket = nerf.

Basically, what TGC said. Although i would dispute elemental even being “ok” in 3s, since they only really work in war/pal/sham makeups.

LOL…LOL, period.

Blue actually said they were working to make at least one shaman spec viable in 2v2. It’s the hardest bracket to balance, honestly, and I kind of wish they’d do away with it in favor of 4v4, but it’s a very popular bracket and I don’t see that happening.

Shaman are pretty weak in 2s, enh and resto especially. Elemental is pretty much the one viable arena spec at the moment, as their damage scaling with gear is still pretty off the charts even after being nerfed previously (the Lightning Overload nerf which did improve pve dps but hurt pvp, and reducing the base cast time on Lightning Bolt and nerfing the talent from 1sec cast time reduction to .5). Regardless, once you get about 800-1k spell damage they’re pretty crazy for damage.

Currently there IS a 200+ spelldamage weapon that is one handed, recently I’ve seen a few 30/31 (dual wielding) specs running around pushing 1600ish spell damage or something ridiculous like that.

Anywho, the burst damage capable by elemental place them pretty solidly in PVP, it’s just they lack any sort of CC beyond a snare (frost nova, sheep, fear, cyclone, traps, etc) and have no protective abilities (vanish, bubble, etc) and can’t run away well (druids). It’s funny, they can wear the second highest defense armor in the game, yet they’re probably one of the squishiest classes because they can’t get away.

They do have a lot of good tools though, and any spec shaman can shut down most casters one on one (barring locks) with earth shock, grounding, earth shock (at which point they’re hurting) and tremor for sheep/fears. Sadly, they do suck horribly in 2s in any spec, but can do okay in 3s and are pretty decent in 5s (yes lack of instant heals sucks, but chain heal is silly good). There are some very high (2k+) rated shaman teams, it’s all about diversity and working together. I mean christ, they have a 6 sec (5 with talents) cooldown spell interrupt that has a 20 yard range (25 with pvp gloves). They can kite the hell out of melee if they’re one on one. The sad fact is that they have an incredibly hard time dealing with being focus fired.

They’re not horrible by any means. Also in 2.4 a lot of changes are getting added, and it looks like they’re trying to make enh the 2v2 spec; supposedly flametounge weapon will apply a debuff on the target reducing healing on them by 50% (of course it’s bugged and INCREASES healing by 50% at the moment). Auto-attack MS effect? Yes please. I’ll grab a fast offhand and throw FT on it and keep WF on my slow mainhand for burst if this is the case, and keep a slow offhand in case there is no healer on the team.

Oh yeah, Shamanistic Rage will be a physical effect too. No more dispelling it, so that’s 30 seconds of 30% damage reduction and some free mana back. Not bad.

Also in 2.4 resto will get a 30% chance to resist dispel on their spells, earth shield is getting a reduction in mana cost (about half) and will only have 6 charges (though if they just made the charges dispel one at a time it would be fine too). Supposedly it will have a 20econd cooldown, but I hardly see that having any effect any ways.

I’ve gone back to my 70 enhancement shaman, and I’m glad I did since these changes look promising.

Also as far as “Worst Melee in the Game” are you referring to damage output? I’ve seen some silly good enh shaman, and the entire point of the spec is to do moderate damage and supply buffs for everyone else (Unleashed Rage, Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem, Strength of Earth, Mana Spring for pally tanks, etc). A shaman in T6 or equivalent gear puts out about 75-90% of the DPS of a rogue while increasing everyone elses DPS quite a bit, tank threat generation with windfury, and if he’s not a retard twisting that with Grace of Air for an extra 5% dodge on that tank too and increased crit for everyone (AP and stuff too for rogues/etc).

They’re damn good at PVE now. Just need a PVP buff.

TLDR

j/k…but damn what a read. n e wayz. Yeah it’s bullshit shammies are gettin some hella buffs (besides elemental nerf) and pallies get nothin but reitemized gear, (might make a big difference) that we so desperately needed.

I’ve been doing damn good in 5’s recently as ret.

Charge in target healer…team assists. I take focus fire and bubble…get healed to full and we proceed to rape the other 4 players…seems to be working pretty well…though we are still very low rated now and have just figured out how to make it work.

I realized it was TLDR, but I’ve played shaman since day 1 and seen enhancement go from stupid overpowered in PVP (back before TBC when you could get a slow fat two hander and one shot people; this was back in the days that 4k was considered “average” hp for most non-tank classes though) to the state it’s in today, where people laugh when they see me in the arena with two weapons equipped.

Anywho, I think the Paladin changes in 2.3 were excellent. The re-itemizaition is awesome, and Crusader Strike becoming 110% weapon damage instead of weapon damage + holy damage means that you can focus on getting pure melee gear instead of trying to get caster loots on the side. It was an excellent change. The thing is though, Ret has always been pvp viable. Even now it’s still pretty good in the Arena if you realize your other abilities beyond Crusader Strike and judging (also using non-damage judgements, like Justice on a druid… I miss paladins being able to fuck with druids like that… “HEY A PALADIN IS ON ME WATCH THIS LOL TRAVEL FORM WHAT THE FUCK HE’S KEEPING UP WITH ME OH GOD THAT SWORD IS BIG”).

While I do think that Blizzard is doing a good job in removing the ability to be one-shotted with all the stamina and resilience gear they’ve put in for PVP I think their claims of not wanting people to “lose control” of their characters is stupid. It’s going to happen. It does happen, a lot. And the classes that can do it are insanely good. I’ve had fights with warlocks who get off a fear on me and for some ungodly reason the fear does not break for it’s entire duration and I end up dying because I was at full health and I didn’t want to waste a trinket. Honestly, I think the Fear spell should be removed from warlocks; they were given the spell because early on the class was so horrible that they couldn’t level without it and now that they’re beastly good I think they should take it back out.

Anywho, I have a lot of respect for good ret pallies. The ones who know their class and abilities and do things other than mash their Crusader Strike and judge blood or crusader. The same goes for any hybrid class that can heal though, sometimes those clutch heals win the game for you.

Props to you, ret pally.

Wow @ shaman buffs.

MS effect on flame tongue? It sounded totally fake when I first heard it.

Indeed, I’m having fun with my ret paladin in PvE as well. Just hit 70 a little over a week ago, but an intensive gearing-up burst and I’m doing quite competitive DPS. Usually 1st or 2nd on the charts in heroics, and just went into Kara for the first time on this character last night and did #1 damage overall (windfury totem + undead instance really helped, too).

pallys…

for ppl who don’t have enough balls to play a warrior I guess…

Holy Knight: I thought it was bullshit too, but it looks like it’s real. Too fucking good, but now I have to get THREE S3 weapons; two slow one and one fast. For PVE (the two slow) and PVP (one slow and one fast).

Danny: Both Ret and Enh are fucking GREAT for trash. While both specs have good sustained DPS they both excel at burst and on mobs that only last 10-20 seconds they can unload and fly up the meters without having to worry about building combo points, mana issues on multiple pulls, or waiting for dots to tick. If people would start to understand this you’d see a lot less people turning down enhancement and ret in favor of warlocks/etc. Also pubbies seem to have this idea that HEROICS ARE SO HARD OMG WE NEED CC FOR EVERYTHING. One CC is fine for 90% of the heroic instances in my opinion; and you can run some of them with no CC if you have a pally tank and competent healer.

Netology: It’s a totally different animal. Paladins used to be scrub warriors with three lifebars who got stuck healing end-game, but can now use three completely different completely viable specs that all have different jobs available to them (heal, tank, or dps). This is opposed to warriors, who have pvp dps (arms) pve dps (fury) and tanking options open to them.

Of course once warriors get geared out they’re ridiculous (as always) but it’s just getting there. So yeah, pallies are kind of easy-mode warriors for leveling.

Well, it was my first raid ever as a DPS spec (raided all through pre-TBC as holy and post-TBC as prot), and we weren’t running with a paladin tank, so I didn’t get to bust out a lot of Consecration AoE on trash mobs. But aside from that, due to gear and buffs, if I get a chance to sit in one place and unload damage, I can sustain quite a bit. Vengeance up to +15% damage on three crits and it stays up. Darkmoon Card: Crusade stacks up to 120 AP and stays there as long as I keep hitting. And once both are stacked, and I’m sure the tank’s got solid threat, I can trinket and AW and start putting out some real burst damage. #1 boss damage on Attumen and Moroes, #3 on Maiden (managed to die without getting healed up; got battle rez), and missed out on #1 at Oz by 1.5k damage.

Speaking of putting out some burst, I had fun in heroic Mech on that boss that gives you the 2x damage buff. Windfury totem proc, two melee crits, an SoB hit and crit, about 14k damage in 1.2 seconds.

Good man, though if you’re putting out more dps than similarly geared rogues/dpswarriors/etc then they either suck at their class or just don’t care enough.

Key word is similarly geared.

Also, you should check out: http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17193-paladin_retribution_dps_theorycraft/ for lots of info on ret pallies. EJ has tons of good info for every class, spec, and pve/pvp stuff is seperated.

Get some!

Well, our similarly geared (well, much more geared compared to me) rogue /gquit last week, and our regular DPS warriors were respecced prot for the run. But at least I kept pace with our Kara-all-farmed-out enhance shaman.

But I specifically make it a point to care enough. Elitist Jerks, MaxDPS, Cromfel, etc, I studied 'em all. I show up to our T4 content wearing crafted T6 shoulders (and should have the crafted bracers within the week). And back when my tank first joined the guild, they hadn’t yet downed Attumen, and I answered a “LF1M Kara need OT” request in LookingForGroup, but when I showed up at Kara geared up after weeks of optimized prep time, they appointed me MT for the run and I’ve been MT ever since. I basically do it to show that if you care, and I mean seriously care about your performance, you’ll do fine whatever role you pick up.

Yes, if you care you’ll always do well. Karazhan is specifically designed to the point that if everyone is doing half of their possible DPS given their gear you can still clear the instance fine. It’s easy-mode.

Sadly, I spent a lot of time out of country these last two years, and am just now getting back in to WoW these last few months (and only actively raiding since maybe the beginning of February).

One thing that has me excited but also kind of upset at the same time is that new BT equivalent gear will be purchasable with heroic badges. This is awesome because you’ll be able to gear out for Sunwell and whatever else comes out without stepping foot in SSC/TK/BT.

This is also bad for the same reason. Gear does not a good player make.

It also bothers me that we’re probably STILL going to be running weekly karas, not for new players or alts to catch up on gear, but for the 20+ badges you get for running the place. Because that’s what I want to do with my time: Farm old content, right?

Well, yeah, we’re clearing it fine, not in danger of wipe even if I’m not there. The point of outperforming them is to show them, “Hey. The paladin is outdamaging you. Step it up!” Sort of an indirect raid buff. :slight_smile:

And for those of us who are dedicated to being good players even before BT-equivalent gear, quite very yes to new badge/craftable gear. The Blade of Harbingers? Mayhem Projection Goggles? Hard Khorium Battleplate? Yeah, it’s gonna be expensive to pick those schematics/plans up off a Sunwell raid guild, but the reward’s worth the effort.

Im going to roll a warrior, yes or no :slight_smile:

do it